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Enemy Ships
In FTL, there are many enemy ships you will encounter, below are different ships and how to fight them. General information Most races have three types of ships: *Scout *Assault *Bomber The Rebels are a notable difference, with their Riggers and Elite Fighters, as well as the Slug Interceptors and Light-Cruisers. General Strategies Often, you find that the best all-round weapon in FTL is a simple laser weapon, such as the Dual Lasers or the Burst Laser Mk. 2. This is because: *Beams can be stopped very easily with only a layer or 2 of shields *Missiles can be easily shot down by defence drones and can use up your missile storage quickly *Bombs do no hull damage and use missiles as well. *While e.g. the Crystal weapons are better than laser weapons, they can be very hard to obtain. However, when combined with Laser weapons, Beam weapons are often extremely effective as they can't miss and can do mass damage easily with the enemy shields down. Usual targets Generally, you want to aim at these three locations in an enemy ship: * Weapons * Shields * Cockpit * Medbay (if you're boarding) Sometimes, you can skip these if: * (Weapons) You have good shields/evasion so the enemy can't/probably can't hit you * (Shields) You have only missile/bomb weapons * (Cockpit) You only use boarding * (Medbay) You don't care about the usual additional rewards for killing all the crew and just want to destroy the ship or don't have a crew teleporter installed. Crystal Ships Engi Ships Engi Ships are easily distinguishable with their trademark gray hull and squarish design (see below). A Drone system is always present on Engi ships, always accompanied with at least one active Defense Drone. If a MedBay is present in the ship, then the ship is guarenteed to have MedBot Dispersal, which allows the Engies to take extra beatings during an assault Strategy: The best way to counter engi ships is with a crew teleporter (and a bomb weapon if the ship has a medbay). Bombing the medbay and sending in a boarding party (Engi ships rarely have anti-personnel drones) will guarentee victory. Engi Bomber Engi Bombers have very crammed rooms, making a beam weapon devestating once shields are taken down. An Engi Cruiser has: *A Cockpit *An Engine room *A Weapons room *A Shield room *An O2 room *A Drone control room Federation ships Federation Scout Federation Bomber Strategy: If you have a pike beam, and some sort of weapon to get rid of the shields, you can hit 6 rooms with one laser, as shown below. Note: Federation ships can only be fought against if they are pirates, and thus the colour scheme is not that of the real Federation ships. However, they can be met as friendly ships asking for help. Mantis Ships Mantis warships are coated (appropriately) in a red hull, and are very symmetrical in room layout. Mantis ships typically carry heavy weapons as well as a crew teleporter (even in pirated Mantis ships). Unlike other ships, Mantis ships are typically not homogenous, often carrying Engi slaves to make up for the Mantis' lack of repairing. Strategy: Mantis boarding parties can be devastating, as they can do so much damage to crew. Unless you have well trained fighters, or an anti-personnel drone, try suffocating the boarding party. It's also advisable to have a defense drone, as mantis ships usually have highly destructive missile weapons. Fire weapons devastate Mantis ships, provided they don't have anyone on board the ship to put out the fires. If you have a boarding party which has atleast two strong members, it is easy to kill the crew of smaller mantis ships, but it is more challenging, and unless you know what you are doing, and is unadvisable, to board larger mantis ships like the bombers. Rebel Ships The rebel ships utilise advanced technology, and are often better than the other ships at their stage. Elite Rebel Ship You will encounter this ship if the rebel fleet catches up with you, or at the last sector, the Last Stand, where you will commonly fight these at different beacons. It is recommended to stay away from the rebel fleet in the early stages until you manage to upgrade things like your shields, engines and such. AI-Controlled Rebel Ships Automated ships are unmanned ships. This means that they automatically repair systems over time and have no oxygen on board. Be careful if you're using boarding as a way of taking out some initial systems (e.g. Shields), since you will need an at least level 2 teleporter to be able to teleport 100 health crew members back before suffocating . Rock and Crystal members can last a little longer due to their higher health and respective abilities. Auto-Scout The Auto-Scout always has: * A cockpit. * Engines. * A weapon control. It can have: * Shields. * Cloaking. It starts with 10 missiles. Strategy Auto-Scouts more than make up for their lack of defence and health with a deadly array of weapons, high-power engines, and cloaking. Take advantage of their fraility before they can do any real damage. High shields can be penetrated without misile weapons via ionization. Auto-Assault The Auto-Assault always has: * A cockpit. * An engine room. * A weapons room. * Shields. Note: Sometimes, Auto-Assault ships may have FIVE '''shields. It is pracitally impossible to penetrate the shields with just one of the non-missile weapons. The five shields may be a bug in the game, but this maybe why the developers gave missiles 5 shield piercing in the game. It can have: * Drone Control. It starts with '''10 missiles. It can have either of the following drones: * Anti-Ship Drone Mark I * Anti-Ship Drone Mark II * Anti-Ship Beam Drone I Weapons Both ships can have either of the following weapons: * Defense Laser Mark I * Burst Laser Mark I * Burst Laser Mark II * Burst Laser Mark III * Heavy Laser Mark I * Heavy Laser Mark II * Leto Missiles * Artemis Missiles * Hermes Missile * Mini Beam * Halberd Beam * Small Bomb * Fire Bomb * Ion Bomb * Ion Blast * Heavy Ion * Ion Blast Mark II Rock Ships Rock ships often rely on their missile and beam weaponry. This can be easily negated though, by having a defense drone as it effectively renders missiles useless, whereas the beams practically won't even touch you if you have a good shield (Level 2 is often good, as it stops everything short of a Glaive Beam).They are equiped with Rock plating augmentation. Rock Scout Rock Fighter Rock Assault Rock Assault (Elite) Slug Ships Slug Interceptor Slug Light-Cruiser Slug Assault Zoltan Ships All Zoltan ships (except ones in sector one on easy mode) carry a Zoltan Shield, which impedes ALL weapons, drones, and teleports. Although uncommon, it's not unheard of to see Zoltan working with Engies in the same ship. Zoltan prefer to arm their ships with ion and beam weapons at every opportunity. Strategy: Beam drones cut through the overshield in a jiffy, and don't miss at the same time. Once the Zoltan Shield is down, a boarding party will easily get rid of the enemy zoltan crew members. (provided the medbay on the enemy ship is down) Another strategy is to get ion weapons since they do double the effect on the Zoltan Shield. The Ion Blast Mk II alone will take the Zoltan Shield down in 12 seconds provided it does not miss. Note: Beams do two room damage effect on Zoltan Shields whereever you fire them. The Rebel Flagship The Rebel Flagship is the final ship you can encounter in a play through of Faster Than Light. This ship is also most likely the hardest ship you will encounter in Faster Than Light. It has three forms, each one meant to be harder than the last. It has 4 layers of shields, high dodge rate, and an individual room for each type of weapon (ion, missile, burst laser and beam) which is separate from the other rooms and can be destroyed. However, there is a crew member in each of these and thus they will be repaired. In its first form, it can cloak itself (loses for 2nd stage), in the second form it has drones (loses these for 3rd stage), and finally in its third form it has a Zoltan shield, it uses its teleporter and shoots between 5 and 10 lasers from apparently nowhere. Upon winning a section from it, a bit of it will be broken off from the ship, starting from the left, then the right and finally the ship is destroyed and you win the game. If you kill all its crew, you will get a message that a powerful AI controls it now. That's bad news: it will now automatically repair systems. General Strategy: It helps greatly to have at least the following: *Cloaking *Teleporter *Lvl. 6+ Weapons with at least 6 or 7 laser bolts or a Mk. 2 Ion blast *Defense Drone Mk. 1 (practically better than Mk. 2) *3 or 4 layers of shields *Lvl. 6+ engine You shold first kill the human in the missile weapon and destroy it with your teleporter. Next, you can do the same for the beam, however it is not required. Do this in all stages, as 1. it is the easiest way to destroy it and 2. the three missiles can easily get past even a Mk. 2 defense drone. Next, just destroy its shields (Mk. 2 Ion blast can remove all layers if set to autofire, assuming it doesn't miss) and cloaking, and try to kill some crew while you're at it. Often, they will all go to fix the shields so just wait until there are 2-4 people and launch a barrage at them. Forms: First stage Special Attack: None Special Defense: The rebel flagship has quite a longlasting cloak. This can make the fight difficult, because it allows him to repair, heal, recharge. It has quite a big crew too, so this can cause some problems getting through. Strategy: It helps if you view this battle not just as a battle you must win at all cost; but as a preperation step for the next two battles. Although all systems will be repaired between fights, dead crew will remain dead though. Killing all of the crew results in the ship's advanced AI taking over and all systems begin to auto-repair. Be aware that it loses the turret and cloak on the left after the first fight and the turret on the right and drone control after the second fight. This is the only phase where it has each of the triple-turrets. You need 3 shield, at least 30% evasion (estimation) to not die quickly. Defense drones and cloak can help negate damage too. Second stage If you emerged victorious from your first battle, the section furthest to the left breaks off, taking away its ability to cloak, its ion weapon the door system, and up to three crew members. Special Attack: '''The special attack of the second stage consist of a large squadron of anti-ship drones (around 5, mostly beam drones). This special attack is not as strong as those of the the other two stages. '''Special Defense: The boss has a defense drone deployed during this stage, rendering missiles practically useless. Strategy: Despite the weaker special attack, this isn´t an easy stage, however. The defense drone and boarding drone can make life quite hard. Especially since killing the boarding drone, just makes him fire a new one almost immediately (probably causing a new breach too). There are three ways of dealing with the boarding drone: *Shooting it down with a defense drone *Having improved blast doors and ignore it until it enters an important room *Damage the drone facility enough so that it stops moving Third stage Special Attack: The special attack of the third stage consists of a burst of laser-like attacks, about 8-9 shots that arrive almost simultaneously. '''Special Defense: '''A zoltan shield that takes about 10 hits. Once in a while it suddenly has a new shield, although this doesn´t recharge quickly at all. '''Strategy: '''The third stage, the attacks of the rebel ship are the strongest. Where the previous rounds a defensive strategy may have worked, the best way to deal with this stage is to deal as much damage as quickly as possible. The AI usually uses its teleporter to board you straight away, so be prepared to deal with that before you start the third stage fight.